A VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NÔNG VĂN HẢI
SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE
DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON
WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE
(Phép thế nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong văn
trần thuật tiếng Anh so sánh với bản dịch sang tiếng Việt) M.A. Minor programme thesis
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15
Supervisor: Dr. DƢƠNG THỊ NỤ
HANOI, 2011


1.2.3 Types of Cohesion …………… ………………………………… 12
1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion
………………………… ……………………. 14
1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion …………………………… …………………. 20
1.3 Overview of translation 21
1.3.1 The Concept of Translation ……… ………………………………. 21
1.3.2 Important factors of Translation ……………… ………………… 21
1.3.3 The basis of translation ……………………………………… ……. 22
1.3.4 Source Language and Target Language ……………… …………… 22
2.1 English Substitution Devices 23
2.2 Vietnamese Solutions to the English Substitution Devices 26
2.2.1 Cohesive Devices ……………………………………………… …. 28
2.2.1.1 Grammatical Cohesion Devices
……………………………………… 28
2.2.1.2 Lexical Cohesion Devices ………………………………………. 31
2.3 Translation Techniques 32

PART C: CONCLUSION 33

REFERENCE: 35
vi

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1. Type of cohesion
Table 2. Grammatical and Lexical cohesion
Table 3 Occurrences and frequency of cohesive items of substitution in Corpus A
Table 4. Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English
substitution device
challenges for a translator to deal with, especially in the field of literature.
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Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have
encouraged the author to conduct the study entitled “Substitution as a Grammatical
Cohesive Device in English Narrative in Comparison with Its Translation into
Vietnamese”. I hope that this study may help teachers and learners of foreign
language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices.
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
Based on the detailed classification of cohesive devices in English of
Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study provides a close analysis of a particular
grammatically cohesive device employed in English and its equivalence in the
Vietnamese translation. This paper aims to study from a quantitative and a
qualitative point of view the possible shifts of cohesion in translation in literary
texts and solutions adapted to the Vietnamese translation.
Furthermore, this study compares the translation strategies that translators
use in transferring substitution from an English literary text to its Vietnamese
translation. This may pose great difficulties and problems because of the difference
between the two languages.
In order to achieve the aim of the study, some following research questions
are raised.
1. What are the possible shifts of cohesion within the text of translation in the
field of literature?
2. What are the main problems that may occur in translation through the use
of substitution?
3. What are the possible solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation of a
literary text?
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close
relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the

translation.
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5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
This study is divided into three main parts.
Part A is the introduction which includes rationale, aim, scope, method and design
of the study.
Then Part B is the development which consists of 2 chapters in which chapter one is
about the theoretical background of the study and chapter two is the analysis of
substitution as the device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative in
comparison with its Vietnamese translated version.
Part C is the conclusion which describes a summary of the present study with some
interesting findings.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 Discourse
1.1.1 The Concept of Discourse.
There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Halliday
(1985) defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process”. According to Crystal
(1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a
sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or
narrative”. Cook (1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers
discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and
purposive”. In other words, as Brown and Yule state, discourse is language
material, either spoken or written, in actual uses by speakers (and writers) of the
language.
Since its introduction to modern science the term “discourse” has taken
various, sometimes very broad, meanings. In order to specify which of the

 Intertextuality - reference to the world outside the text or the interpreters'
schemata;
Nowadays, however, not all of the above mentioned criteria are perceived as
equally important in discourse studies, therefore some of them are valid only in
certain methods of the research (Beaugrande 1980: 49).
1.1.2 Spoken and written discourse
Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics
meanings. As stated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence
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and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing
leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contribution”. While written discourse
comprises complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent
modifications via adjectives and adverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences.
Although spoken and written discourses share the communicative functions, they
serve various functions. The former is concerned with interact ional use and the
latter with the transactional use (Brown and Yule, 1983: 13)
By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure. The
writer has time to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make
necessary correction which is primarily concerned with the transactional use.
Spoken language, as stated by Brown and Yule (1983), is the kind of language
which is produced under some temporal, spatial pressure with the speaker’s
monitoring of what it is that he has just said, determining his current phrase and
simultaneously planning his next utterance and which is primarily concerned with
the interactional use.
There are three prominent features that can apply to distinguish written and spoken
discourse.
1. Density: the density is the information volume presented. Evidently, written
language is dense while spoken language is sparse.
2. Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important,

information found outside individual sentences. Therefore, cohesion is a semantic
relationship between an element in the passage and some other element that is
crucial to its translation. The cohesive marker creates a tie with the information
found outside the sentence and establishes a meaning relationship across sentences
within the passage.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) proposed a methodology for cohesion analysis
and noted that the basic concept employed in analyzing cohesion of a passage is that
of the cohesive tie. The tie includes the cohesive element in addition to that which is
presupposed by the cohesive element. Five categories of cohesive elements or
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markers were defined by Halliday and Hasan: reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical markers or general nouns. Reference consists of personal,
demonstrative, and comparative pronouns (e.g., the motorbike belongs to her).
Substitution is a relation in the wording rather than meaning. Substitutions are
alternate words used in the place of a repetition of a particular item (e.g., Our
television is broken. We need to buy a new one). Ellipsis is the omission of an item
(e.g., Did you hear the news? No, only the weather). Conjunctions are cohesive
indirectly as they express certain meanings that presuppose the presence of other
discourse components.
1.1.4 Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is a primarily linguistic study examining the use of
language by its native population whose major concern is investigating language
functions along with its forms, produced both orally and in writing. Moreover,
identification of linguistic qualities of various genres, vital for their recognition and
interpretation, together with cultural and social aspects which support its
comprehension, is the domain of discourse analysis. To put it in another way, the
branch of applied linguistics dealing with the examination of discourse attempts to
find patterns in communicative products as well as and their correlation with the
circumstances in which they occur, which are not explainable at the grammatical

Baker (1992) relates cohesion to the study of textual equivalence defining it
as “the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links
between various parts of a text”. The important role of cohesion is to build up
sentences in any given text. This comes through the linking of different parts of a
text to each other so that it gives a structure to a text. It helps in hanging sentences
together in a logical way, for having a right meaning. So, cohesion has a relation
with the broader concept of coherence.
1.2.2 Cohesion vs. Coherence
The distinction between cohesion and coherence has not always been
clarified partly because both terms come from the same verb cohere which means
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sticking together. In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal
relations that provide links between or among various parts of a text, and is
expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary.
Coherence, in contrast, can be understood as the quality of being meaningful and
unified. As for Nunan (1993), coherence is "the feeling that sequences of sentences
or utterances seem to hang together".
The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the
text, and that defines it as a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some
element in the discourse dependent on that of another.
Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which
link various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent,
create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions
by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and
paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words
and expressions that we can see or hear.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) identify five main cohesive devices in English:
reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.
E.g. American Life Inc. pays the mortgage on each property from its own

or semantic. It can be made clearer in the following description:
Nature of cohesive relation
Type of cohesion
Relatedness of form
Relatedness of reference
Semantic connection
Substitution and ellipsis; lexical
collocation
Reference; lexical reiteration, Conjunction

Table 1. Type of cohesion
(Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976:304)
Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion,
as the name implies, lexical. Conjunction is on the borderline of grammatical and
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the lexical; the set of conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection. However, it
is better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical
with a lexical component inside. Consequently, we can refer to grammatical
cohesion and lexical cohesion as follows:
Grammatical cohesion
Lexical cohesion
Reference
 Exophoric
 Endophoric
- personal
- demonstrative
- comparative
Substitution
 Nominal

Table 2.
Grammatical and Lexical cohesion
1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion
As mentioned above, grammatical cohesion consists of four subtypes, they are
Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunction. Below, by analysing some typical
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examples, the author attempts to go into detail with each type with a view to giving
an overall background of grammatical cohesion.

Reference
To begin with, in the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976:32), reference is a
semantic relation and "since the relationship is on the semantic level, the reference
item is in no way constrained to match the grammatical class of the item it refers
to".
The two authors also distinguish situational and textual reference very
clearly by contrasting exophora (or exophoric reference) and endophora (i.e,
endophoric reference) as follows:
Reference
[situational] [textual]
exophora endophora
[to preceding text] [to following text]
anaphora cataphora
Figure 1: Reference

text, with typical villages and their populations (everybody), their schoolmaster and
miller. These ones are exophoric reference.
Now consider the following example of reference with the pronoun "she":
Although she was still tired, my sister managed to go to school.
In this particular text, neither anaphoric nor exophoric reference supplies the
identity of "she", we have to read on, and are given the identity in the following part
of the sentence. “She” here is cataphoric reference.
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Also according to Halliday and Hasan, there are three types of reference:
personal, demonstrative, and comparative. The first is reference by means of
function in the speech situation, through the category of PERSON, such as: I, me,
you, we, us (noun/pronoun); mine, my, your, yours, one's (determiner); etc. The
second is reference by means of location, on a scale of PROXIMITY, such as: this,
these, here, now (near proximity); that, those, there, then (far proximity); or the
(neutral proximity). The last is indirect reference by means of IDENTITY or
SIMILARITY, such as same, identical, equal, identically (identity-general
comparison); similar, additional (general similarity - general comparison); other,
different, else, differently, otherwise (difference); better, more, so, equally
(particular comparison).
These various devices enable the writer or speaker to make multiple
references to people and things within a text. Examples of these types are as
follows:
1. Peter didn't come to the party. He is too busy typing his reports for the
next meeting.
In this example, both “Peter” and “he” refers to the same person. “He” in the second
sentence is regarded as personal reference.
2. Tom is always the last person to enter the meeting hall. This annoys his
colleagues.
As can be seen, “This” replaces the meaning of the whole preceding sentence. In

B: I think so.
We can see clearly from this conversation that B agrees with A’s idea and the word
“so” substitutes the clause “it is going to rain”. “So” is clausal substitution. Ellipsis
Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence or clause and can
only be recovered by referring to an element in the proceeding text. The former is
non-cohesive, and the latter is cohesive. Elliptical cohesion always appears
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anaphoric. Ellipsis can be repetition. This is similar to substitution in terms of three
types: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis.
+ Nominal ellipsis:
My kids play an awful lot of sport. Both [ ] are incredibly energetic.
In this instance, in order to be fully interpreted, the sentences must be filled with
“my kids” in the gap. However, these are omitted as it is not necessary for readers
to work out the sentence’s meaning.
+ Verbal ellipsis:
A: Have you been working?
B: Yes, I have [ ]
Similarly, there is no need to repeat the verb in this sentence as it presupposes the
word from the previous verbal group. The full answer for A’s question is “Yes, I
have been working”. Hence, B’s response here is known as verbal ellipsis.
+ Clausal ellipsis:
A: Why'd you only set three places? Paul's staying for dinner, isn't he?
B: Is he? He didn't tell me [ ].
B’s answer in this case can be understood as “He didn‟t tell me he is staying for
dinner”. As this clause is omitted, this sentence is considered as an example of
clausal ellipsis.

We have been looking for that book for months. Finally, we manage to get
it.
- Causal: so, then, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this,
as a result, with this in mind, for, because, on this basis, to this end, arising out of
this, in that case, that being so, under the circumstances, otherwise, in this respect,
with reference to this, aside from this, etc.
As a student, he was very lazy. Consequently, he failed his entrance
examination to university.
- Adversative: yet, though, however, only, nevertheless, despite this, in fact,
actually, on the other hand, at the same time, instead of, on the contrary, at least, in
any case, anyhow, at any rate, etc.
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I have lived here for ten years; however, I've never heard of that pub.
- Additive: and, and so, nor, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively,
incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, for instance, thus, likewise,
similarly, in the same way, by contrast, etc.
She is intelligent. And she is also very reliable.
1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion
Lexical cohesion was first advanced by Firth (1957) and later developed by
Halliday. Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a discourse are semantically
related in some way. Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify lexical cohesion into two
main categories: reiteration and collocation.
Reiteration
Reiteration, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976), is "the repetition of a
lexical item, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the context of
reference; that is, where the two occurrences have the same referent". Reiteration
involves repetition, synonyms and near synonyms, superordinates, and general
words.
The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the moment it began, it was clear